Thursday, September 6, 2012

Investing in SEO: Marketers are Doing More SEO Than They Think

I was thrilled to see the joint GroupM and Nielsen research published recently on the UK Search Marketing Landscape. If you missed it, Danny Goodwin’s blog post, “Organic vs. Paid Search Results: Organic Wins 94 Percent of Time” is a great summary. With this study, marketers and search marketers have, for the first time, vendor-neutral data containing evidence of organic search click-through rates (CTRs).

As a quick recap, the research concludes that 94 percent of searchers click through on organic search results, and that the top three positions in Google earn 61 percent of the clicks. These numbers aren't far off the numbers I’ve used for years when describing the importance of SEO in a marketing budget as well as ranking on Page 1 for the keywords prospects are searching on to find your organization. The GroupM and Nielsen numbers simply (and strongly) validate the importance of an on-going SEO strategy.

A significant disconnect, however, continues to exist between the impact that SEO can have on impressions, click-throughs and lead generation compared to PPC and the representation each receives in a typical marketing budget.

Take Forrester’s U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, for the years 2011 to 2016. Marketers are spending and will continue to spend, on average, 88 percent of their search marketing budget on paid search campaigns to access just 6 percent of the available click-throughs, and 12 percent on organic search in attempts to reach an astounding 94 percent of the available click-throughs.

I’m not the first person to point out this imbalance, nor will I be the last.

I find it useful for marketers to visualize the difference in available CTRs from SEO versus PPC. Before the GroupM and Nielsen CTRs were published, I used Optify’s CTR data to apply to monthly search volume for a given keyword. The chart below depicts the daily estimated number of clickthroughs for the keyword phrase “HR Software” in Google.com, Google.ca and Google.au across Page One and Page Two of the SERPs.

Based on the research, data available and assumptions below, an HR software company attempting to rank for this keyword should expect, if they were occupying position one in Google for the term “HR Software”, 24 clickthroughs per day from SEO and just two from PPC; three clickthroughs from SEO if they were in position six or seven for the same term and nothing from PPC.

Think of this more as a model for comparison rather than an exact answer since there are so many uncontrollable factors surrounding a keyword. (Read: Five Forces of Keyword Competition)

In this model, one must also consider the difference is resources (time and money) required to increase positions in SEO versus PPC. With SEO, the input of time and money is uncertain, however, the results are longer lasting. With PPC, one can instantaneously gain a top position, but it can disappear just as quickly without a trace of ever being there.

2120 monthly searches * 94 percent = 1992 * 36.4 percent /30 days = 24 daily clickthroughs for position #1 in Google.com for the keyword "HR Software"

The purpose here isn't to convince marketers to shift their marketing spend, nor is it intended to discount one marketing tactic over the other. (I believe there is a time and a place for all marketing tactics within a given strategy). The purpose is simply to take a closer look at SEO as a line item in a marketing budget and other marketing tactics that affect SEO.

SEO as a Line Item in your Marketing Budget

Marketers are spending more on SEO than they realize when they also have the following line items in their budget:

Content Marketing
Social Media
Video Production
Public Relations

These marketing tactics affect a web presence and organic search rankings and can have a significant positive impact on SEO including: rank, backlinking, social signal generation and fresh content, but are often not included in the traditional SEO budget.

Content Marketing

SEO cannot be done without content creation in the form of on-site content optimization and off-site optimization (i.e., blogs, press releases, case studies, how-to guides, videos, etc.), yet content marketing is often a separate line item from SEO, and unfortunately a lot of off-site content isn't optimized for SEO.

A client case study, for example, can have a significant impact on SEO rankings if it is deliberately optimized for keywords driving traffic and socialized for the purpose of organic search ranking.

It is worth noting that according to the Custom Content Council, marketers spent $16.6 billion on electronic content marketing in 2011 and the trend is continuing.

Social Media

Social media and SEO are very much separate line items in a marketing budget, but content socialized at the page level through Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube generates social signals which can positively impact SEO and an organic search ranking.

The most direct link between SEO and social media is Google+ and Search plus Your World. If you haven't yet started to build out your personal and business Circles, please do. A piece of content shared through your Circles has an opportunity to be found by your followers through Search plus Your World – before your competitors’ content is found.

Video Production

Video can be a secret weapon in an SEO strategy given that YouTube is the second busiest search engine and your prospects want to consume your content in video format. Many organizations are specifically itemizing video creation in their marketing budget. If the video content is optimally tagged, it can dominate in both YouTube and Google proper for the keywords the video has been optimized for.

Public Relations

Many organizations have a PR budget that doesn't factor into their SEO budget. So although PR efforts may be impacting SEO, they could be positively impacting it even further if the PR content was optimized for keywords driving traffic.

Press releases that are written specifically for a keyword that is converting targeted traffic will be more impactful on lead generation efforts given that Google gives priority to fresh, relevant content and will likely list the press release in its News section if it is distributed through the proper channels (e.g., Marketwire, Businesswire, PRWeb, etc.).

Stop Underestimating SEO in Your Marketing Budget

SEO today consists of more than just backlink building and on-site optimization. Content marketing, PR, social media and SEO go hand-in-hand, and the investment in one tactic can positively influence the outcome of another.

If you're an SEO professional, but not yet involved in your clients’ social media, PR and video production efforts, talk with them about the importance of bringing these tactics together for the overall benefit of SEO.

If you're a marketer and are working with different professionals or employees on each of these tactics, it's worth your time to bring the different disciplines together in attempts to optimize all content across your web presence for keywords that are driving targeted traffic and conversions.

SEO as a line item in marketing budgets is typically underestimated. The gap between what marketers spend on SEO versus PPC is not as significant as Forrester indicates. Those marketers and SEO professionals who attempt to execute SEO in a silo will never get the results they expect (especially not overnight).

My marketing budget has a line item called “Optimized Content Marketing Strategy” with sub categories that include:

Content Marketing
SEO
Social Media
PR
Video
Email Marketing
Paid Search

This approach will give you a better chance at reaching the top of Google for your converting keywords and the opportunity to enjoy awesome organic click-through rates!

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2203277/Investing-in-SEO-Marketers-are-Doing-More-SEO-Than-They-Think?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=Investing%20in%20SEO%3A%20Marketers%20are%20Doing%20More%20SEO%20Than%20They%20Think&utm_campaign=09%2F06%2F12%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

Friday, August 31, 2012

Content Creation: How to Build a Successful Outsourced Team

by Steve Lazuka | 359 views

Published on August 31, 2012

In this article you'll learn that...

Your can outsource content that is high-quality and cost-efficient and delivers results.
A true team effort is needed, including efficient systems, management time on your end, and client engagement, to make the process work.
You can achieve growth and success when you view your freelance writers as long-term partners and an extension of your in-house team.

Editor's note: Although this article specifically addresses agencies' efforts at content creation for clients, much of the guidance it provides can apply to client-side marketers as well.

Marketers far and wide, including those on the agency side, know the value of content marketing—as its own service offering and as the foundation for integrated campaigns.

Agencies confront clear operational challenges, however, in delivering a high volume of quality content that is also profitable and efficient for the business and serves the full range of clients' niche business areas.

Agencies therefore need to ask themselves:

Do we have the ability to hire professional copywriters in-house?
Should we task our account team members with producing content on behalf of their clients?
How do we price content to be reasonable and within client budgets and also profitable for the agency?

Often, to address these issues, agencies turn to freelance networks and specialized writing partners to either supplement internal resources or serve as a fully functioning content team.

Results begin and end with relationships

As a writer, and having seen content marketing from all corners of the business, I've learned that results start with solid relationships behind the content.

When outsourcing, you can employ the best technologies, platforms, and channels, but as an agency leader you need to approach content as a true team effort, engaging your account leaders, clients, and partner writers.

If you don't focus on your people management skills as well as spend the time needed to guide the process and provide strategic and editorial direction, disconnects will arise between the delivered work and the desired end goals, including traffic, lead conversions, thought leadership, and community building,.

Look at the process as a convergence of business, freelancers, and clients, making your writers an extension of your business and building long-term partnerships that can scale with your needs.

That sort of fusion won't happen overnight, but if you're willing to put in the time to build the systems that work for your agency, you'll build long-term success that brings future opportunities in content marketing.

1. Set up your agency for success

If your current editorial management process is built around a spreadsheet, you need to move toward more collaborative and efficient systems.

A dedicated project management software platform can serve as the key communication hub to manage your writers, projects, and publishing calendar. Take the time needed to identify the tools and maximize all of the features. Also, make sure you can add your own in-house writers and manage outside talent within a writer marketplace, all from the same system.

Don't be afraid to spend more time up front evaluating systems, training yourself and your account teams, and building an infrastructure to support the volume of content your agency will be managing.

The more confidence you have behind your people and processes, the more comfortable your clients will be with the idea of outsourcing their writing. By being transparent, you demonstrate that you have your clients' best interests in mind and the ability to change your outside writing partners as needs change—all while keeping your client-satisfaction levels high.

Using whatever management system works for you, work closely with your client to deliver content projects in the way that works with their schedules and budgets.

2. Connect with the right talent for your clients

Take the opportunity to sample writers you think could be the right fit for your agency and for individual clients' style and industry. Get to know writers on a personal level, review and compare rates, and check out writing samples.

Also, understand the cost sensitivities from both sides: the clients looking to maximize their content budgets and the writers building their writing business and earning income. Refuse to compromise on delivering original, quality content that makes an impact in the quantity and pricing that keeps you competitive. You can find balance if you do your homework up front.

Typically, higher rates will yield a higher quality of writing, but if you create a more efficient process that saves time and efforts, you might be surprised at the quality of content you can receive at lower price points.

Always keep in mind that successful content begets more content opportunities. By outsourcing, you can scale your deliverables without dramatically increasing your overhead.

3. Take responsibility for results

Accountability is the key to successful collaboration. Responsibility falls to your agency to achieve end results and to make all the time and efforts worthwhile.

To forge the best writing partnerships for your agency and clients, look at early works from writers as "works in progress." When working with smaller client budgets, plan for agency time for strategic direction, content review and editing, and revision rounds with your client.

If you like a writer's style or niche focus but you are not fully satisfied with early posts, use the opportunity to create a partnership via open communication, and refine the content by adding insight, client knowledge, and marketing savvy.

Your agency bridges the gap between written copy and results-driven marketing by setting goals and building the mechanisms to measure the success of your content. Content that drives business results is a win-win-win for clients, writers, and your agency.

The fate of the game is in your hands.

How do you manage outsourced content?

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2012/8819/content-creation-build-a-successful-outsourced-team?adref=nl083112

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Why I Talk Most Folks Out of SEO Projects

Agree with Mark article below--- some accounts might not be the best for your firm and we need to learn to move on.

Why I Talk Most Folks Out of SEO Projects

Mark Jackson, August 13, 201221 Comments

After reading that headline, perhaps you’re wondering to yourself, “has Mark lost his mind”?

The answer? Not yet.

I've been involved in search engine optimization since March 2003. In that time, I have seen every angle and talked to just about every type of SEO prospect that there could ever be. One thing that hasn’t changed much, unfortunately, is that there are still a ton of people who are trying to engage in SEO, but hardly even know what SEO stands for.

Case in point:

Had a call this week with a prospect. Prior to the call, I had run a few reports and did a little research/digging around, so that I could be prepared to take them through what I believed to be “reality”.

One of my first questions on an initial sales call is “what are you trying to achieve?”. I might also phrase this as “what are your goals” or “how will you determine ‘success’”?

The answer? “I want 5,000 hits per month”.

Once I corrected them on what I believe they meant “5,000 unique visitors”, we moved on to what I thought it might take to grow traffic to those levels, and whether I believed that a sound ROI (that stands for “return on investment”, for those “SEOs” out there) could be achieved, at least in the short term.

After reviewing their competitive landscape, we find that the space (rankings) is dominated by government websites. That is to say, any keywords that have any amount of search volume and are “on target” with who we’re trying to reach, have official government web results dominating the top 4-5 positions. If we were going to make any headway, we would need to (at least in the initial phases) build out content to target the long tail until we earn the right (and Google’s trust) to gain any traction on these competitive keywords.

Oh…and did I mention that this was a new website with all of three websites linking to it?

As I explained to this prospect, “this could take a while”. And, “while the perception is that search engine optimization traffic is ‘free’ traffic, that is not the case…you’ve gotta earn it.”

After years of “selling” (have I mentioned that I really don’t like using that word?) SEO, I had a gut feeling that this prospect had no idea what SEO looked like, how it was done, how it should be measured, or much anything else. Mind you, I’m not throwing this guy under the bus.

SEO can be a challenging thing to wrap your head around. It’s not as “easy” as buying traditional media and many people are still trying to evolve to the “new ways” in which companies should be marketing themselves (i.e., getting into marketing programs that can be measured and optimized).

One other thing that I knew? This guy was not going to wait months for results…he needed leads, today, and needed ROI very soon.

When you’re building your initial presence into the search engines, you can expect it to be an investment of time and money. Did you catch that? An “investment”, meaning that you’re not expecting quick returns…you’re going to invest time and money into something that you hope will one day be a sound investment and provide ROI.

Feeling that I was on the right track, I helped this person understand ROI. And, when you take into account the cost of their employee(s) working on the SEO initiative, the cost (time/money) of creating content, the cost of an agency assisting with SEO efforts, etc., SEO was not going to provide an ROI for this particular prospect for quite some time. So, I recommended PPC. And why not?

When you get into PPC, it can provide some great information that you can – one day – take into your SEO efforts. You might learn which keywords “work” (convert into leads) and which do not. You might find which ones convert better than others, and decide to build additional content into your website, based upon this information. You might find that your website doesn’t convert traffic into leads/sales at all (which is great to know, before you work 12 months on obtaining that coveted number one ranking on that highly competitive keyword).

Our industry has matured, but there are still many prospects out there trying to “get into this SEO thing” without much thought as to why, how, how much, etc…

I ask each of you out there who own/operate or otherwise influence decisions at SEO agencies to help these folks. Sometimes helping them involves walking away from money. As a small business owner myself, I know that’s hard to do…but, often, it’s the right thing to do.

Many prospects still feel “icky” about our industry. Who can blame them when prospects, such as the one above, can call 10 companies and find 8 that would gladly take their money without providing any insight on how results can be achieved, how long it might take and let them know if it’s even possible/reasonable to expect ROI?

Let’s all do our part by walking away from business that we shouldn’t take. Let’s commit ourselves to being honest about expectations and the work necessary to see results.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2198225/Why-I-Talk-Most-Folks-Out-of-SEO-Projects?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=Why%20I%20Talk%20Most%20Folks%20Out%20of%20SEO%20Projects&utm_campaign=08%2F14%2F12%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

Is Anyone Home?? A look at companies that neglect their Facebook fans

Is Anyone Home?? A look at companies that neglect
their Facebook fans
Chase Gregory
Sr. Partner
NSG Consulting Inc

Neglecting your Facebook fans and subscribers just boggles my mind when I see it happening
on pages where every “Like,” should be, and could be a subscriber for life. How do
you neglect your fans like that? You buy booth space at shows and events, tell them
to follow you on Facebook and Twitter, yet when they ask you questions about your
business on them, no one answers…..

Is anyone home?

Ignoring social signals for your business needs to stop. So many companies pitched
to social media say that they are fine with doing it in house on their time with their
employee(s). But what they fail to realize is that their employee(s) already have
a full plate, and when you catch them on social media where you don’t think they
should be, whether you think its important or not, you give them “something better
to do,” and that’s not how the best social media guru’s do their best work. They
do the best work because it really does take that extra link click on another page,
or other comments and likes on industry related sites and SM pages that pay off.
It takes thought, and maybe you need to discuss this in your pitches so the client
understands what Google calls “organic content/pages.”

If you represent your company with SM, please….please talk to your customers. For
the love of your business, if you just don’t have the extra time to do SM the right
way and with the proper etiquette, hire a third party marketing firm and start with
their lowest package that also moderates the page at least once a week if not once
a day. If you don’t, you wont see the lack of sales coming, it will just happen, and
you’ll blame your finances on poor marketing and cut social media because you
don’t think it is working. Lack of sales happens because you are not doing something
right.

www.nsgconsultinginc.com

How Manufacturers use LinkedIn to Improve Their B2B Selling

Natalie Davis July 9, 2012 Social Media Marketing 0

When you think “social media”, what sites come to mind? Facebook? Twitter? While these social media sites are important when it comes to B2B selling, perhaps the cornerstone of all social media is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is all about connecting businesses with other businesses (B2B) rather than connecting businesses to consumers (B2C). What we’ll talk about here is exactly how you can use your LinkedIn account to help draw people to your manufacturing business and how your LinkedIn account can help bolster your sales.

How to Get Started

How well your LinkedIn account will perform depends on how well you set up your account, as we talk about in our free Ebook “Social Media Tune Up”. Here are just a few things that we’ve put onto an easy to follow checklist to ensure that your LinkedIn account is set up and ready to sell:

Complete your Personal Profile

Include a Profile Picture: This is particularly important, given how anonymous the internet can be. Even if you are doing B2B selling, businesses still want to do business with people – not faceless companies.
Include your Employment History: This is an important one, since your employment history will immediately reveal your expertise in your field.
Include your Website: Whenever possible, advertise that website of yours. Make sure you change the name to your actual company name.
Include Recommendations: This is particularly true for any small B2B manufacturing companies. If you have a customer who wants to give you a glowing testimonial, then by all means ask if you can include it on your LinkedIn account.

Complete your Company Profile

Upload your Logo: Your logo not only helps with brand recognition, but it helps a customer trust you, too. It only takes two minutes, and it’s well worth your time.
Add your Mission Statement: Throw your mission statement into your profile to let people know what you do and what the purpose of your manufacturing business is.
Add any Employees: If you have employees who have LinkedIn accounts, by all means add them under your list of “employees”.

Join Groups

Network with Others: When you’re a small B2B manufacturing business, it’s important to network, network, network! Joining groups on LinkedIn will help you build connections with people in the same or similar industries. This may help you strike up some good business deals and relationships that can benefit both companies in the future.
Encourage Employees to Join: Again, if you have employees on LinkedIn, by all means encourage them to join in the same groups to help foster relationships.

How to Sell on LinkedIn

Selling on LinkedIn is easier than you may think. A lot of manufacturing clients that came to us in the past had yet to fully harness the power of selling on LinkedIn, but after we gave them some tips on the information below, they often doubled if not tripled their business.

Status Updates

Just as with Facebook, the status updates that you post on LinkedIn are powerful. You can share important news articles and industry news that you feel is beneficial to anyone who is involved in your industry. You can easily share this with your groups that you join too by clicking on the “share” button. Your status updates will then post to all of the groups you’re a member of, and it can even sent that update out as an email to people who aren’t on LinkedIn.

Sharing your status updates accomplishes two major things:

Networking
Prospecting

Watch who comments. Listen to what’s being said. Check out the profiles of some of the other group members and see how they think and feel about various topics.

Develop a Rapport

If you’re checking out the profiles of people on LinkedIn and participating regularly in groups, then you’ll be able to find out a ton of information on them. For example, you may find out that someone’s interests include F1 racing, dogs, and the Mets. And what a coincidence – you also are a Mets fan and have a German shepherd you love at home. Just having those common interests can help foster a good business relationship in the future. A recent client of ours said that she made a great business connection on LinkedIn because they both loved oil painting and even having that one thing in common allowed her to trust this other business contact more than others online.

Key Takeaways:

If you’re a manufacturer who really wants to benefit from LinkedIn, then you have to do two things:

Fill out your profile completely
Learn how to sell by building personal relationships with other companies online
http://www.impactbnd.com/how-manufacturers-use-linkedin-to-improve-their-b2b-selling/

Need Help?

If you’re a manufacturer interested in maximizing your LinkedIn presence, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.

Posted by Natalie Davis, @natalieIMPACT

How To Use LinkedIn To Improve Organic Visibility

Sep 1, 2011 at 1:14pm ET by George Aspland

inShare583

I was recently doing some link building for a client and noticed that a LinkedIn profile for their top competitor appeared in the listing of strong incoming links in one of the review tools we use.

But our client also has LinkedIn profiles pointing to their website, so I wondered, why weren’t those links appearing in the strong link listings too? So, I set out to look at the differences that might affect the strength of incoming links from LinkedIn.

In this article, I’ll cover a couple of steps you can take to help improve the visibility of your LinkedIn content with search engines as well as within the LinkedIn community, increase the exposure of your LinkedIn updates, and improve traffic to the Web content you point to in LinkedIn updates.

It’s important to realize that LinkedIn isn’t only for B2B. It’s effective for any company to network with connections in the industry, with vendors and partners, to find resources, for recruiting, etc.

Setup A LinkedIn Company Page

One of the main differences between our client’s LinkedIn Profile(s) and the profiles of that top competitor was that their competitor has a LinkedIn Company Page with employees associated with it. Our client has some employees with profiles that link to their website, but they do not have a Company Page.

What are LinkedIn Company Pages?

From Linkedin: “Company Pages are a company’s profile of record on LinkedIn and a powerful way to speak to millions of professionals through word-of-mouth recommendations and trusted testimonials. It’s like a LinkedIn profile for a company.

Company Pages present an opportunity to reveal the human side of your company. Provide a peek at the individuals behind your brand and highlight how members use your products.

As an example, here is Search Engine Land’s LinkedIn Company Page.

How To Setup A Linkedin Company Page

A current employee whose position is listed on their own LinkedIn profile can setup a Company Page. You’ll need a company email address (e.g. john@companyname.com) that is one of the confirmed addressees on your LinkedIn account.

Start here and follow the steps to setup your Company Page.

Here are some helpful resources about Company Pages:

LinkedIn Learning Center article on Company Pages

LinkedIn FAQs about Company Pages

Associate Employees With Your Company Page

Once your company page is setup, have some of your employees associate their LinkedIn profiles with your Company Page. Here are the steps to associate a profile with a Company Page:

Click Profile at the top of your home page.
Click Edit next to your current position at the company.
Click the Change Company link.
Type the full company name.
Select the correct company name from the dropdown list.
Click Update.

Have Your Employees Optimize Their Public Profiles

Having your employees optimize their profiles helps make the content on their profile more visible to others within the LinkedIn community and with search engines.

Here are the steps to optimize a profile:

Hover over your profile name in the upper right corner of the profile screen and choose Settings

Hover over profile name and choose Settings

In the Settings section, choose “Edit your public profile“

Choose “Edit your public profile “

Check “Make my public profile visible to everyone”. Then select as many of the options below as you are comfortable with.

The Headline, Summaries with specialties, Additional Information / Websites are helpful for search results.

Check “Make my public profile visible to everyone”. Select Options

Have Your Employees Share Your Updates On Their Profiles

When you have important updates to share ask some or all of your employees to post the update on their LinkedIn Profiles.

For example, when you want to announce that helpful video you put up on YouTube or that great how-to article that was just published (such as we talked about last time in The Guide To Effective Article Marketing ) ask your employees to Share the Update on their profiles with a link to the content:

Paste the URL to your content in the Linkedin “share an update” window.
Then overwrite the URL with a note. After you see the snippet of the content in the window below you can erase the URL and put a note in:

Share an Update on Linkedin

Having employees share updates on LinkedIn can get your update in front of thousands of people on LinkedIn who may in turn share it, bookmark it, Like it, link to it, etc.

For example, if you have 50 employees with LinkedIn profiles each with an average of 100 connections and most of them posted an update about a great article your company published on its website, thousands of connections on LinkedIn, many who are familiar with your company and (hopefully) favorably predisposed, may see that announcement.

Tip: Think twice about allowing too many Automated Updates

Like most social networking sites, you can have updates from other social sites, such as your blog posts and tweets, automatically updated on a LinkedIn Profile. I’d think twice before allowing too many automated updates to appear on LinkedIn (or other social networks). I have some connections that have so many updates appearing (mostly from Twitter) that I’m afraid to say I ignore all their updates. There’s just too many.

Yes, all these updates increase visibility on LinkedIn, but too many updates may keep your human connections from noticing the important ones. I’ve turned off auto updates from Twitter to our Facebook and LinkedIn accounts long ago.

I submit most Facebook updates about important blog posts, articles, etc., manually so as not to overload our Facebook connections with updates. Plus, I can then craft a custom note about each update. I may start doing the same on LinkedIn for only our best blog posts and turn off the auto updates from our blog.

The End Goal

Having a company page with associated employees (each with optimized profiles) who are active with a large number of connections, can increase the visibility of your content both on LinkedIn and with search engines, while giving you a effective online networking tool to communicate with hundreds or thousands of connections.

Sharing updates with these connections should help increase awareness of your messages and the Web content you link to in your updates, and possibly increase the rankings of that content as your connections share, bookmark/like, and link to your content.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.